Last week, I had a teething PB, which meant his little nose was stuffy, which meant that he woke up at 12:06 a.m. and had to be cuddled a little before going back to sleep. I hadn’t been up with him in the middle of the night in a while. He’s been sleeping through the night for several months now, and don’t you know, we are very lucky!
Anyway, as I was rocking him back to sleep just like I did in those early days, and my mind was flooded with memories of our first few days home together. Ahhhhhh, infanthood.
I’ll never forget pulling into our driveway after bringing him home from the hospital. Ben and I just sat in the car for a couple of minutes, trying to let the reality of our new lives sink in. We were parents. I was a mom. Shouldn’t I be taller, have fluffy bangs, and wear Keds? Isn’t that what moms do? And Ben. He was a dad. Wasn’t he supposed to have a mustache? A beard? Why weren’t we driving a minivan?
For me, I don’t think it really ‘sank’ in that we were parents until we got home, away from the hustle and bustle of the hospital. One of the first things I did when I got home was take a shower. And let me tell you, I have never taken a more glorious shower in all of my life. I used every good smellin’ product I had in the tub. I think I washed my hair 4 times just because I could. It was that good. Anyway, I was in the shower, mourning over my deflated, wrinkly, sagging stomach and Ben came running in the bathroom.
“Britt, he just peed all over the place. His changin’ table, the wall, his curtains, everywhere. What do I do?”
My initial thought was to tell him to get a nurse. They took care of the messes at the hospital when I was having trouble walking and was high on stool softener. (God bless you nurses out there!)
Holy cow. There were no nurses now. WE were the nurses, the doctors, the parents. His little life was in our hands. We were responsible for his every need. He depended completely on us. And then it hit me, right there in that glorious shower. I started crying. Hard. A mix of hormones, pain, and a realization that I was now a mom. And I would always be a mom. And just like I depended so much on my own mom, he would depend on me. I was totally overwhelmed. I was in pain. I was tired and hungry. I wanted to crawl into my own bed and sleep for 16.75 hours.
But I was a mom now. And there was a tiny, precious baby boy and a confused husband who needed me. I got out of the shower (smelling like a Bath & Body Works store gone bad, I might add) and went to the nursery. Ben and I wiped the pee off of the walls and curtains. And then we just sat, stared, and sniffed his tiny body, in awe that God created him through us. He was our baby. We were his parents.
There was nothing like those early days. It was such a rush of emotions and adrenaline. We were totally unprepared for ‘what to expect after we expected’. Somebody needs to write a book on that, y’all. They tell you what to expect when you’re pregnant, what to expect when you deliver, but they totally leave out what to expect when you come home tired, sore, and totally clueless on how to care for a newborn. We came home and felt like two little kids trying to take care of this tiny life. It was fun. It was tiring. It was emotional. It was hard.
But it was worth every single minute.
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| A typical scene in the early days. |
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| My sleeping babies. |
I love every little stage of his life. And so far, I think this crawling/close to walking/jabbering non-stop stage is my favorite. But there’s just something special about those first few days. Nothing says ‘welcome to motherhood’ like pee on the walls and a sagging stomach.
